Old School To Be Preserved

Enterprise Society To Turn It Into Museum

ENTERPRISE -- Nestled at the back of an old classroom, a sink long rusted over and a row of cubbyholes hide in what used to be a washroom, or perhaps a cloakroom.

Florida hard pine lines the walls and floors of the 68-year-old Enterprise schoolhouse, its dark luster obscured by time and carpeting.

Students in seventh through 10th grade attended the two-story white building from 1936 until 1969, when Deltona Junior High School opened, and it was later surrounded by an expanding Enterprise Elementary School.

Now preservationists want to restore the schoolhouse as a place of learning. The project, led by the Enterprise Preservation Society, will turn one of the oldest structures in the 160-year-old community into a heritage museum. The building is one of 27 identified by Volusia County as historically significant in Enterprise.

The project signals the preservation society's evolution and shift in perspective since it came together four years ago to stave off sprawl and an ever-growing Deltona.

Almost since its beginning in 2000, the preservation society's priority has been the historic Thornby property on Lake Monroe's shore. Things changed when the only structure on the 40-acre property, the 87-year-old house that in its heyday had been considered the most elegant estate in Volusia County, was destroyed in a fire last fall.

Once the site of glamorous parties whose guest lists included the area's most prominent residents, the house had been identified by preservationists as an important piece of "old Florida."

"The loss of the house was definitely a setback, but when one door closes, another one usually opens," said Mark Matzinger, chairman of the Enterprise Preservation Society.

Although the group continued to fight to protect the Thornby property from development, not long after the fire a new opportunity emerged: The Volusia County School Board donated the Enterprise Schoolhouse to the nonprofit agency. Organizers envisioned a place to put artifacts and other important items scattered among local old-timers.

"After Thornby, this was something to focus on as a way to make up for that," said Sandy Walters, an Enterprise resident and society member.

Walters and her husband, Ron, are donating $80,000 to the preservation society to buy land where the schoolhouse will be moved in 2006.

The schoolhouse, currently on Main Street, lodged between buildings that make up the newer Enterprise Elementary, will move less than a block across the street. The cost of moving the building is estimated to be at least $50,000.

Volusia County has joined Enterprise in its preservation efforts. The county added to its comprehensive plan specific goals and policies related to Enterprise and is looking at recommendations for more ways to help the community hang on to its character.

Engineering consulting firm GAI, hired by Volusia County to develop a plan for Enterprise, hopes to have that project completed by October, project manager Doug Kelly said.

"There's a lot of pressure to develop Enterprise, so there's an urgency about this," Kelly said. "Half a mile down the road, you've got cookie-cutter subdivisions built on areas that had so much history to them."